Are you an ambitious empath looking for a way to thrive in your career? In this blog, you’ll find 4 useful career insights that help you as an empath to get the most out of your work.
Estimated reading time: 10 minutes
Here’s What You’ll Discover:
What Is An Empath?
An empath is a person who is capable of perceiving the mental or emotional state of other individuals. Dr. Judith Orloff, who is an author and expert with regards to empaths, describes them as ’emotional sponges’. Consequently, empaths absorb all the world’s joys and stresses.
Whether it are thoughts from other people, energies in a room or emotions from animals; empaths have amazing capabilities to feel it all. Depending on the type of empath, these qualities vary.
In her book “The Empath’s Survival Guide: Life Strategies For Sensitive People”, Dr. Judith Orloff explains that empaths do not have the filter that most people use to protect themselves from experiencing external stimulation. Hence, they may struggle with taking in all the emotions and energies around them, whether they are positive or negative.
Career Insights For Ambitious Empaths
While heightened empathy is a wonderful gift, it can cause certain challenges in relation to career. Finding happiness within your profession as an empath, is crucial for a happy and fulfilled life. Therefore, have a look at these 4 career insights to thrive as an ambitious empath.
#1 How To Find The Right Job As An Empath
When you start your career or you are planning on making a career shift, you have to find a job that suits you perfectly. But how to find the right job as an empath? There are many ways to approach this challenge. One model that may be particularly useful in the process of discovering the right profession for you, is the Ikigai model.
Ikigai is a Japanese theory that helps you to identify your life purpose and career path. Is is the one thing you enjoy waking up for every morning and that makes your life feel worthwhile. ‘Iki’ means life, while ‘gai’ means value or result.
The Ikigai model is a Venn diagram consisting of four aspects.
What…
…do you love?
…are you good at?
…can you get paid for?
…does the world need?
The sweet spot between these four aspects forms your very own Ikigai, or life purpose. By answering these four questions and combining them in one, you will find your ideal life path or profession.
You may want to use this model to find out whether you currently are pursuing the right career path or to discover whether you should head in a different direction.
If you’d like to talk with somebody specialized in empaths about your career path, head over to our expert page to the section ‘business and career coaches’, where we share a list of the best certified experts out there.
#2 Best Careers For Empaths
Another aspect to take into account in relation to career, is that some professions take its toll on empaths. Hence, it is crucial to be aware of careers that suit your empathic traits. Below, you can find five of the best industries for empaths to work in.
Health Care
Working as a doctor, nurse, therapist or in another health care profession can be very rewarding for you as an empath. As you have heightened abilities to understand the challenges your patients are facing because you feel them in your body, you can be an excellent caregiver. People feel comfortable around you and will open up to you more easily due to your empathic skills.
However, it is important to set healthy boundaries and to protect your energy when working in this industry. Otherwise, you may risk empath burn out and take home many emotions and sensations that aren’t yours.
Writing
Another rewarding career as an empath is to work as a writer. Whether you become an author, a blogger or work for a media publisher – the possibilities are endless.
As empaths oftentimes are creative and have a wild imagination, working as a writer can be an inspiring career path for empaths. Oftentimes, empaths are able to put into words what less empathic people struggle to express verbally, simply by feeling.
Art
Because of their creative qualities, empaths often express themselves through art in the form of music, painting or acting. While this is not the easiest career path to take, empaths oftentimes succeed in pursuing these professions.
Their art is relatable for people and speaks to their hearts. If pursuing an art career is your dream, go for it! You don’t have to quit your current job immediately, no worries. However, you can start your art business in your leisure time and slowly grow it with help of social media. If you can dream about it, you can do it!
Why not read the book ‘Mind Your Business: A Workbook to Grow Your Creative Passion Into a Full-time Gig’ in order to become a full-time artist?
Charity Work
Another gratifying career path for empaths is to do charity work. As empaths care deeply about creating a better world, working within a charity organization can be incredibly inspiring.
The best thing about this industry is that it requires many different types of skills. From creating connections with the right people to getting the word out there on social media or collecting money – charity work has it all! Therefore, it may be interesting for you as an empath to look into charity organizations in your surroundings looking for talents.
Social Work
Similarly to charity, social work helps empaths to utilize their many gifts. Especially the people skills of empaths are useful when doing social work.
When it comes to social work, you may consider careers where you help homeless people to get their life back on track or support families that struggle in daily life. The possibilities are endless.
Self-employment
While being an entrepreneur seems rather stressful, it can give empaths the much-needed freedom and inner peace they are longing for. Therefore, self-employment is a path many empaths pursue in order to thrive at work and make a living.
If you desire to start your own business, make sure to know exactly what you would like to do and how your business will stand out from the crowd. This is crucial for becoming a successful entrepreneur.
#3 Worst Jobs For Empaths
While being an empath brings along many wonderful gifts, it can also cause certain challenges. Setting healthy boundaries, people-pleasing and emotional overwhelm are some of the struggles empaths face. Hence, it is important to avoid certain career paths that may trigger these issues.
Below you can find a list of professions that may be challenging for empaths. However, please note that nothing is impossible and that you can also thrive in these careers with the right personal growth knowledge and skills.
Customer Service & Sales
One of the industries that empaths rather avoid, is working in customer service and sales. Customer service is a challenging profession because people usually only call when they have a complaint. While you as an empath will be very capable of understanding them and helping them to calm down, the daily exposure to anger and frustration may sooner or later take its toll on you.
The same goes for sales. People usually do not want to be called by salesmen and most of them are annoyed by those calls. As an empath, you may not want to deal with these emotions of annoyance on a daily basis.
Politics
Another career you as an empath may want to avoid, is working as a politician. Politicians oftentimes work crazy hours and have little time for themselves. Since you as an empath need to recharge daily in order to thrive, this career path may not be the best choice.
However, if you are engaged in politics and want to make a change, becoming an activist may be a better choice for you.
Retail
Working in retail can be fun, depending on the store you choose to work at. However, there are incredibly many stores where you would rather not want to work as an empath.
Having to deal with energies from hundreds of different customers every day can be challenging for empaths. Especially when the type of customers differs greatly from you as an empath. Dealing with complaints, impatience or rudeness from these customers can sooner or later exhaust you and affect your work fulfillment.
#4 How To Protect Your Energy As An Empath While Working
Once you have identified your ideal profession, it is time to climb that career ladder. However, in doing so it is crucial to protect your energy. You do not want to take home energy with you that is not yours. Therefore, it is wise to apply some energy protection techniques before starting your work day. Below, you can find some useful ways to shield yourself as an empath.
Grounding
Grounding is the art of staying (electrically) connected to the calm energy of the earth. This study shows that grounding has positive effect on your immune system defense. Another study suggests that grounding can reduce pain, stress, depression and fatigue. This emphasizes the importance of grounding your energy before going to work.
When you are properly grounded, you stand steady on the ground, like a tree deeply rooted in mother earth. Even when there is a storm, that tree stands its ground and so can you when certain challenges arise at work. Therefore, make sure to spend a couple of minutes to ground your energy before starting your work day.
Ideally, grounding is done outside in direct contact between soil or grass and your bare feet. So if you have a garden, consider to go outside to do some grounding. If you cannot go outside for some reason, ground in the bare sunlight, while holding crystals or stones or to eat fresh ingredients (vegetables and fruits) from the earth.
Also, you may want to try this grounding meditation:
Visualize A Protective Shield Around You
One of the most powerful energy protection techniques you may encounter, is to visualize a protective shield around you. Once you wake up, envision a dome of light building up around you. Only love and positive energy can enter through the invisible walls of that dome.
When you go to work, knowing that you are protected and that nothing negative can enter your aura, you will feel more at ease while working. By setting this invisible boundary, you will most likely soon notice less negativity in your life.
A visualization that is incredibly powerful for creating a protective shield as an empath, is this one.
Determine Boundaries For Energies Entering Your Body
While this exercise may look similar to the previously mentioned one, this one is somewhat different. In some work fields, you want to feel the energy of others in order to help them. Whether it is positive or negative energy, you have to feel it. However, you may not want to feel it in your entire body. A powerful technique you may want to try, is to determine how far energies are allowed to ‘go into’ your body.
Energy enters your body easily through your hands. Therefore, try to put the fingers of your right hand all around your left hand wrist and push firmly, while repeating: “Negative energy is only allowed to flow until here”. Repeat on the other hand as well. By the end of the day, wash your hands for a while, while repeating the affirmation “I am washing off all negative energies and recycling them for the higher good of all”.
If you’d like to read more about overcoming the challenges of being an empath, you may want to read ‘I Don’t Want to Be an Empath Anymore: How to Reclaim Your Power Over Emotional Overload, Maintain Boundaries, and Live Your Best Life’.
The Right Career Path Helps You To Thrive!
Empaths have to carefully choose the right profession, in order to truly thrive in life. Also, setting healthy boundaries at work and protecting your energy field are crucial for your overall wellbeing at work. Therefore, give some of these techniques a try and share in the comments below how they worked out for you.
very intersting facts, indeed very insightful. I enjoyed reading a lot even though I am nowhere an empath
I have heard of the Ikigai model but did not understand it fully, thanks for explaining it better.
Thanks Anne for this amazing article. I’m an Empath and I work in the human resources office, although I like working with people and helping them out with their employment needs,sometimes it gets frustrating and I end up losing myself.
I definitely think since I started working from home has really helped me being an empath. I am not picking up on everyone’s vibes and I can focus more on my own.
Not really sure if I’m an empath myself, but i do know a lot of amazing people who are empaths. They make amazing leaders!!!
I think I am an empath as I think I have the qualities that you listed. I am going to find if I am truly one.